


Siren's Call

by nommonkeypie



Category: Block B
Genre: Gen, Other, mermaid au, siren au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 18:10:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14899446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nommonkeypie/pseuds/nommonkeypie
Summary: Legend says that those who hear the song of a siren are driven to death. So why does this human live?





	Siren's Call

**Author's Note:**

> For Carey because she's the one who told me to write it

The surface was calling his name. It had been so long since he'd gone up there, since he'd been able to sing.

But the consequences...while beautiful and interesting, Taeil knew he carried the price of this urge to sing on his skin. He was covered in the magic that inked his skin. Some among their kind considered the marks badges of honor, a visual representation of the lives they'd taken. Others thought them a shame, marks of the sin they'd committed.

No one knew why magic inked designs into their skin. No one understood what the marks meant either. But everyone was marked.

Fighting the urge was impossible. Everyone needed to sing and the only place they could do this was at the surface. Some ended up being horrified at what they'd done and used that to fight the urge again. Jaehyo was like that. He had one small mark from when they were young, still practically hatchlings.

Taeil tried to fight it too but the urge, the need, it always overwhelmed him. At least he wasn't alone. He and Jiho had spoken often about it, about how powerful it was.

Jiho often spoke of having music in his soul. It wasn't a terrible description if Taeil were honest. Jaehyo thought they were crazy and tried to ignore them. He still listened to their conversations and Taeil caught the guy nodding along at times.

They caught him staring up at the surface sometimes.

The same surface where Taeil now found himself.

Instinct told him to sing so sing is what he did. He wasn't sure how much time had passed. He never did. The world could be ending and he wouldn't notice. All that mattered was that he let it out.

“Hey mister, why you singing that sad song?”

Taeil’s voice died as he realized he had just heard another’s voice. He looked around, trying to figure out the source.

A small surface dweller was on a thing. One of those things surface dwellers used to ride water. Taeil had seen a few of these. This one seemed bigger than the ones he'd seen before. Usually the ones his people saw were barely as big as the surface dwellers who rode them.

The small surface dweller was another mystery. This was the first time one of them had ever noticed Taeil before other than reacting to the song. Definitely the first time one of them had spoken to him. Would this small one be another mark on his skin? All the others who had heard him had left their marks already.

He didn't know what to say.

“It's a real sad song. I don't like sad songs,” the small one continued on.

“It's sad?” Taeil asked. He didn't know what his song sounded like. None of their kind did. They could feel the urge to sing but the words...they escaped their kind. They couldn't hear each others songs either. Taeil wore the mark he shared with Jiho, showing their mutual failure in that particular experiment.

The small one nodded. “Yeah. How come you don’t know that? You’re the one singing it.”

Taeil shrugged. “The music just comes out,” he admitted. He was more curious about who this surface dwelling child was and how he’d managed to not jump into the water and drown as surface dwellers did. As they all did.

“That’s weird,” the small answered. “Mister, why you in the water? You need some help?”

Taeil didn’t know how to answer that. How could he? Surface dwellers were not to know about his kind. It was too dangerous. They had all heard the story, the tragedy, of Atlantis. He didn’t want to repeat that. He wouldn’t be the cause of his peoples downfall.

“I’m fine. You...why aren’t you asleep?” The moon was high in the sky, shining her cold, beautiful light on them. Normally surface dwellers slept when the moon was out. Sometimes one who was seeking the ocean’s beautiful bounty would still be out but usually the surface dwellers hid at this time. Taeil’s own kind were the ones who took to the night sea, not the surface dwellers.

The little one yawned. “I got woke up,” it answered. “What’s you name?”

Was he supposed to answer that? Should he? It couldn’t hurt though. It wasn’t like this surface dweller would ever see him again. And maybe no one would take him seriously. Taeil remembered being a little hatchling and having issues with the adults listening to him. And Taeil knew the surface dwellers could get bigger. He’d seen the bodies in the water before.

“My people call me Taeil.” He looked at the small one and decided to do something stupid. “What is your name?”

The little one smiled. It was missing teeth. Was it sick? Maybe its family was hoping to dump it in the water so they didn’t have to care for it. After all, that’s what happened when Taeil’s kind became too ill. They were set out to sea for the ocean to take care of. It was the natural way of things after all.

“Jihoon!” The small one answered. It practically shouted the name. Taeil dove under the waves. He waited and waited but no one seemed to be coming. Poking his head above the waves, he looked around instinctively, checking to make sure no bigger surface dwellers came running. 

Once Taeil realized no one else was coming, he relaxed. “I have a friend with a name that's kind of like yours,” he admitted. This was definitely the stupidest, most reckless thing he'd ever done but he was intrigued by the small surface dweller.

“Does your friend sing sad stuff too?” Jihoon sat down on the water rider, two things dangling down it's side. Taeil swam closer, wondering just what they were. They almost looked like they were attached to Jihoon.

Taeil knew surface dwellers didn't have tails. He'd seen their lack of them before. That still didn't make it any less weird to see Jihoon's things. If he tried, Taeil might even be able to reach up and touch the things.

“I've never heard him sing before,” Taeil answered. He stared at the swinging things, wondering just how Jihoon was doing that.

“Jihoon!” A new voice called from somewhere nearby.

Instinct took over and years of being warned to stay away from the surface dwellers told Taeil he needed to leave. Without saying a word, he slipped under the surface. Deeper and deeper, swimming as fast as he could away from the feeling of being chased by surface dwellers who would do unspeakable things to him. They did unspeakable things to each other, to the creatures in the ocean, and to the ocean itself. Who knew what they’d think of if they caught Taeil.

\---

The moon hung low in the sky. For a moment, Taeil could almost imagine himself reaching up and touching it. Inside him, the urge to sing was bubbling up. It wanted out. Glancing around, he noticed a surface dweller thing jutting out into the water off in the distance. He couldn’t be sure but it appeared that there were no surface dwellers around.

Staring at the moon, he let the song inside him out. It consumed him. All he wanted was to let this song, whatever it might be out. He sang forever, the song never ending.

“You’re still singing that sad song, aren’t you?”

The voice rang over the night sky, pulling Taeil from his song. There was nothing and no one around as far as he could see other than the thing that hung out over the water. It extended the land into the sea and now that he was looking at it, he noticed a shadow.

He didn’t recognize the voice but that was no surprise. He’d never met a surface dweller before. Well, other than that little one but if it had been anything like a hatchling, no one would have believed it. But it mentioned hearing him sing again. Intrigued, he slowly let himself swim over.

A large surface dweller sat on the edge. Its things just barely reached the water and Taeil was struck by the urge to pull the surface dweller in with him. This surface dweller, whoever it was, was dangerous. It’d resisted the urge to join Taeil in the water which was something they just didn’t do.

“You’re no longer little,” Taeil said. There was only one possibility who this surface dweller could be.

Jihoon smiled. “You remember me.” It sounded happy. “I wondered if you might. It’s been almost ten years since that night.”

Whatever ten years was, it sounded like nonsense to Taeil. But it meant something to this surface dweller and it was clear that something had changed Jihoon from a small figure to a larger one. Its new form was more like the other surface dwellers that Taeil had seen in the water before.

“You're the only one who has heard me and lived,” Taeil answered. Others among his kind might call him harsh, his words too truthful but he would rather live honestly. Falsehoods only hurt.

Jihoon’s smile grew. It was no longer missing things in its mouth. “So I'm special,” it said. It seemed happy about this which was odd. Why take pleasure in being different? In being unique? Those were not marks of a sane mind.

“You are the only one who has lived,” Taeil repeated. “Your kind don’t survive mine.” A simple fact that had been proven a countless number of times. Taeil’s own body wore the marks.

“Why?” Jihoon asked.

That was the question that Taeil’s people had been asking for as long as they existed. Why did their songs bring death to the surface dwellers? What in their voices called them to the ocean, to drown themselves? No one knew. It was as much a mystery as their own songs were.

“I don’t know,” Taeil replied. “I just know that when we sing, you die.”

Jihoon laughed. The sound was deep and it shook with it. Taeil watched the surface dweller warily, waiting for it to fall off the thing and into the water. That didn’t happen and the surface dweller’s laugh faded.

“I’ve heard you sing twice now and I’m still alive,” it said. “So that’s not true.”

“You seem to be an odd exception. There is something not the same about you,” Taeil replied. He didn’t mean that as an insult. Jihoon was just an odd specimen of its species.

That seemed to make Jihoon happier still. It really was an odd creature. “What are you?” Taeil decided to ask.

“I’m human.” The word was nonsense but then most of Jihoon’s words were. “What about you? You’re not human.”

That was true. Whatever Jihoon was, Taeil definitely wasn’t. “I am Taeil.” His people didn’t have a name for themselves, not like Jihoon’s apparently did. “You don’t need to know any more than that.”

He was afraid that if he started to tell Jihoon about his life, his people, that Jihoon would realize there were others like Taeil. It was too dangerous. Telling Jihoon about the others who lived under the ocean’s surface invited too many questions, too much curiosity. When it was smaller, presumably younger, Taeil might have shared some of their secrets. He couldn’t now that it was larger.

“So, Taeil, you sing a sad song and you live in the ocean. I’ve seen you twice and you’ve looked the same each time,” Jihoon said. It sounded amused by all this. This surface dweller, this human, really was an odd one. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a dream.”

Yet more nonsense. “A dream?” Taeil had to ask.

“You know, when you sleep and see stuff,” Jihoon tried to explain. It was all for nothing. Taeil didn’t understand it. Sleep, whatever that might be, was not a thing his kind did. And as for this talk of seeing things, Taeil had to wonder just how wrong this surface dweller (human he tried to correct himself) was. It needed someone to care for it if it was prone to seeing things. Granted, the ocean could be fickle and its depths could play with one’s eyes if not careful. But Jihoon lived in a land where water wasn’t everywhere. It didn’t shimmer and shine, no depths to make seeing into the distance worse.

Jihoon had an indescribable look on its face. And then it slipped into the water.

For several moments, Taeil wondered if Jihoon had finally done like the other surface dwellers (humans) and decided to let the water take its life. That would make sense even if Taeil wasn’t singing at the moment.

And then Jihoon did the oddest thing. It swam. It was clumsy, like a tiny hatchling who hadn’t yet learned to control its fins. But it was definitely attempting to swim. The way it flailed was cute and Taeil failed to fight back a smile.

“What are you doing?” Taeil asked.

Jihoon laughed and splashed unnecessarily. It was so bad at trying to stay in the water. “I wanted to see what it was like to be in the water with you,” it answered. It was drifting closer to Taeil, close enough to almost touch him.

Taeil left himself be pulled by the water, letting it take him farther from where Jihoon was struggling. He couldn’t get too close to the surface dweller. That was too dangerous. A shame though because as he watched the surface dweller draw closer, Taeil had to wonder what it felt like. Was it soft? Or did it have rough, scaly skin? Was it like a fish or something else?

“You look ridiculous.”

Jihoon laughed again. “Not all of us are magical creatures who live in the ocean,” it said. “I’m not a swimmer.”

“So why come to the water?” This seemed to be a trend with Jihoon. They’d met now twice and it wasn’t exactly like Taeil could venture onto the surface dweller’s land. To do that would be to ask for death and that was even before any of the surface dweller’s found Taeil’s body. Life on land was not something his people were capable of.

“Because that’s where you are.”

There was a longing in Jihoon’s voice that was terrifying. Not in a way that made Taeil fear discovery but in a way that seemed to be asking for something else. That fear made it hard to think and made his heart beat faster. So Taeil did the only sensible thing. He dove under the water, going deeper and deeper until he could finally return to himself.

\---

No moon on this night but the song didn’t care. The song inside him needed to be let out. He’d tried to avoid it. After the last encounter with Jihoon, there was something scary about the land above the water. It held a danger that Taeil had never thought about but one that wouldn’t stop pestering him at the same time.

He wanted to talk to Jiho and Jaehyo about it but they didn’t understand. They couldn’t. Jaehyo could fight the song’s call and Jiho had never been put into the same sort of circumstances. As far as Taeil knew, he was the only one who’d ever met a surface dweller and spoken to it. Who had met the same one again. At least, the first since the disaster that had happened long before Taeil’s own time.

A water rider was nearby. It was small, barely big enough to hold one of the surface dwellers. Before he even looked, he had a feeling he knew who was in it. When he did look, he found Jihoon. The surface dweller (human, his brain tried to remind him once more but again, it was too late) was curled up. Dead? But then, Taeil didn’t know what their dead looked like except when they drowned.

Swimming a distance away, Taeil finally let his song out. The song seemed to last forever, the sky changing colors. His other songs had never lasted as long but this one seemed different. It seemed special in a way that he couldn’t place.

“Everytime I hear you sing, it’s that same damn song,” Jihoon’s voice spoke up. Its own voice broke the magic that held Taeil. “You always sing that same sad song.”

“It’s the same each time?” Somehow Taeil was surprised to hear that the song he sang was the same. He’d always figured it was a new, different song each time. And yet, the fact that he sang the same thing over and over felt right in a way.

“Everytime,” Jihoon confirmed. It was so far away so Taeil let himself drift closer. He didn’t stop until he near it. “The song is beautiful but it’s sad. I can’t...I can’t really describe it any other way.”

Jihoon sat up in its thing, leaning over the edge to look at Taeil. “I hear it, you know. It haunts my dreams and keeps calling me back out here.”

There was something different about Jihoon but the fact that it kept hearing the song did not come as a surprise. Was that why their kind drowned themselves? Did the songs repeat in their heads until they could no longer handle it? The idea was as plausible as any of the theories Taeil’s kind thought up.

Jihoon reached its hand into the water, reaching out to touch Taeil. Something about it seemed different somehow. Had more of whatever those things (years?) passed by? It was hard to tell because Jihoon seemed to look the same as before but not at the same time.

Taeil reached his own hand out, letting their hands meet. “Are you planning on jumping into the water?” He asked, curious. The surface dweller’s skin was soft, not at all scaly. It was fleshy and unprotected, so weak feeling. How could creatures this vulnerable survive? It would take nothing to harm them.  
Jihoon let its hand, so large and soft against Taeil’s own, close. It held a warmth to it that was unexpected. “It’s tempting,” it admitted. “I feel like if I did, I could exist forever. That if I joined you, all the heartache I hear will go away and the song won’t continue to play in my head.”

He wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that. The sky continue to change colors, getting lighter. And even though Taeil knew it could cause Jihoon’s death, he couldn’t hold back the song inside him. So he sang once more, welcoming the light sky.

The water rider rocked as Jihoon joined him in the water. Its eyes were closed and it laid on the water. Taeil didn’t stop singing even as he heard Jihoon’s voice, deep and rich, join his own. It was a beautiful voice and one he found himself wanting to hear. As he listened to Jihoon, Taeil was struck by the thought that it was a shame the surface dweller hadn’t been born among Taeil’s own people. The world needed to hear it.

The sky grew lighter still until it deepened into a blue as rich as the ocean. It was gorgeous. He’d never seen the sky this color before but it was beautiful, so rich and clear and it went on forever. He hated Jihoon and its kind for an instant, that because of Jihoon’s kind, Taeil’s own had been banished to the night. It only lasted a moment though.

He barely noticed when Jihoon’s voice stopped. When Jihoon’s heat started fading. “Go home,” Taeil told the surface dweller when he was able to end his song.

Jihoon laughed. “Yeah, my family’s probably worried about me,” it said. “Help me into my boat?” It seemed to realize that Taeil had no idea what a boat was because it gestured towards its wave rider. He watched Jihoon for a few moments as it tried to pull itself into the boat. The whole thing was rather amusing. It was clear that Jihoon lacked the ability to do it himself so Taeil pushed it, helping it into the boat.

Taeil slipped under the surface but he couldn’t swim away just yet. Something was holding him back so he waited, staying hidden underneath the water. A shadow leaned over the water and he knew it was Jihoon. It was looking into the water as if waiting for something. Was it waiting for Taeil?

He’d barely had the thought before the shadow dove back into the water. Jihoon looked around, trying to gain its bearings. It spotted Taeil and swam, diving deeper and deeper. It was foolish. Doing this would just kill Jihoon but still it swam. Until it stopped.

A prickle of magic spread across Taeil as he watched the water carry Jihoon’s body back to the surface. This death hurt in a way none of the others he’d caused had. But this was the way his world worked. Taeil looked back one more time before he started on the journey back home.


End file.
